edited by P. Ragionieri<\/p>\n
exhibition catalogue: Florence, Casa Buonarroti, 24 May-12 September 2005<\/p>\n
The author of highly original and imaginative secular and religious verse and a figure well known to historians of the 16th century, Vittoria Colonna is the subject of a new exhibition at the Casa Buonarroti, Florence (24 May-12 September 2005). The catalogue is subdivided into four sections, each of them opened by an introductory essay.
\n\u201cVittoria Colonna, the Castle of Ischia and the culture of courts\u201d (Ippolita di Majo) describes Vittoria\u2019s early years in the sophisticated milieu of Neapolitan humanism, a world the feel of which contemporary busts, medals and books attempt to capture. Also notable are two portraits by Sebastiano del Piombo possibly depicting the young Vittoria (the Camb\u00f3 Portrait from Barcelona and the Harewood Portrait). After the premature loss of her husband, Vittoria divided her time between her palace in Rome and the beloved castle on the island of Ischia, surrounding herself with scholars and artists; her literary d\u00e9but, her encounter with Pietro Bembo and the first steps of the religious journey that will profoundly affect her later life date from this period.
\n\u201cVittoria Colonna and Mary Magdalen\u201d (Barbara Agosti) deals with Vittoria\u2019s wish to collect images of Mary Magdalen and with the paintings of this subject she requested from Titian and Michelangelo. Michelangelo eventually executed a cartoon for a Noli Me Tangere: two preparatory studies for this cartoon and a pictorial version attributed by some scholars to Pontormo are in Casa Buonarroti\u2019s collections. (The vicissitudes of this twin commission are also analysed by Michael Hirst in the first essay of his book Tre saggi su Michelangelo.)
\nVittoria\u2019s spiritual restlessness, which brought her close to the penitential movement and into contact with the foremost religious thinkers of her time, is investigated in \u201cVittoria Colonna and religious dissent\u201d (Gigliola Fragnito); most notable in this section of the exhibition are the only surviving copy of the first edition of Il Beneficio di Christo, printed in Venice in 1543 and today in the Library of St John\u2019s College, Cambridge, and a portrait of Cardinal Reginald Pole from the Hermitage, thought by many to be the work of Sebastiano del Piombo but convincingly ascribed to Perino del Vaga by Vittoria Romani.
\n\u201cVittoria Colonna e Michelangelo\u201d (Vittoria Romani) is dedicated to the intense friendship that developed between the poetess and the artist, resulting in masterpieces such as the Boston Piet\u00e0 and Christ and the Woman from Samaria. In this section two studies from the Louvre introduce the visitor to the British Museum drawing of the Crucifixion, the genesis and development of which is documented in several letters exchanged between Michelangelo and Vittoria. This work belongs to one of the most tormented phases of the artist\u2019s life, when the comfort he took in Vittoria\u2019s friendship would be abruptly cut short by her death, leaving him, in the words of Michelangelo\u2019s biographer Ascanio Condivi, \u201cstunned and almost senseless\u201d for a long time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2296,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[99],"product_tag":[1290],"class_list":["post-2293","product","type-product","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","product_cat-catalogues","product_tag-michelangelo-en","first","instock","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n